No serious fallout from Packer’s scrap

James Packer’s 1.3 billion Barangaroo casino has yet to get final approval.
AFR

Just months after the NSW government pushed through controversial "one punch" laws in an attempt to stamp out random violence among young, impressionable men, getting photographed brawling in the street with Nine Network’s head, David Gyngell, wasn’t the best look for billionaire
James Packer
.

He is, after all, awaiting the final tick of approval from state regulators for a licence to operate his planned $1.3 billion casino in the waterfront development precinct of Barangaroo.

Crown Resort’s unsolicited proposal to build Sydney’s second casino, due to open in 2019, had a fan in former Premier
Barry O’Farrell
. But now that
Mike Baird
is running the state, some are asking if Packer still has the friends in Parliament he needs to push forward with his 275-metre-high gambling palace.

But the reality is, the sway of the government is less important in this quest. Whether or not Packer and Crown are fit to run a casino is determined by the Independent Liquor and Gaming Authority. And whether or not Packer and Baird are mates is of little consequence to the fiercely independent regulator.

ILGA to probe background

ILGA will delve deeply into Packer and many of his close business associates, as well as top Crown executives. But no one with knowledge of regulators really thinks the brawl will hurt the application. As one source put it, the Crown camp’s general counsel may have gone into overdrive at the beginning of the week sending nicely worded explanatory letters, but one scrap in a street probably isn’t enough to jeopardise a licence. “It might slow down a process because they need to investigate what occurred, but it is unlikely to stop [a licence being given out]," the source said.

Casino consultant
David Green
of Newpage Consulting said regulators look for things like organised crime links and matters of credibility, such as tax or fraud offences. “For a simple assault, that’s not likely to be a real killer for James Packer," he says. This is the case in Australia, but also jurisdictions where Packer is looking to expand, such as Japan, Sri Lanka and the US, Green says.

Possibly, the most Packer has to fear is embarrassment. But it wasn’t only Australian papers that splashed the fight on its front pages. When it graced page one of The Japan Times, expatriate Rod Lappin, who runs PC maker Lenovo, exclaimed on Twitter how “proud" he was to be an Aussie.

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Lappin says in Japan, two business leaders fighting would be an unlikely sight, but shouldn’t scar reputations. This is good news, given Packer’s Macau joint venture Melco Crown has vowed to spend more than $5 billion in Japan if casinos are legalised.

“Japan in business, while more controlled emotionally, would actually find this incident very intriguing," Lappin says by email.

Overseas, as in Australia, it seems the biggest fallout will just be more head-scratching.